The Queue: Sunglasses (transmog) life

Yep, I’m still wearing my sunglasses, even in the darkest corridors of Torghast. I’d say it was a summer thing, but who am I kidding? Why would I ever take these off when I could be looking this stylish? I might be convinced to swap them for the bronze sunglasses if they became transmoggable, but I’m still living that sunglasses life.

…and still debating the best matching transmog. Neither the bronze color of the frames nor the pink-red tint of the lenses are easy to match, and as the screenshot shows, I’m not trying hard for a perfect match. But something must be the perfect compliment to this lovely shade, and one day I will find it.

One thing people were worried about early on — even before the alpha or beta were available, I think — was a comment one of the devs made about time passing differently in the Shadowlands. That seemed to generate some worry that by venturing into the land of the dead, we might lose the land of the living to some time skip. I myself wondered if this meant you couldn’t travel back and forth between Shadowlands and Azeroth, because Time Is Weird.

But I actually think this might be a really interesting way to advance the story and really change the game. What if we return to Azeroth and a fifty years have passed? A hundred years? A thousand years? What if we return home to find the long-term damage done by Sargeras’ sword being stuck in the planet, which we’ve all ignored. Something like that might mean we return to a wasteland, where we need to restore and rebuild. Or perhaps without us, the players, who are complete idiots, Azeroth has had a hundred years of peace, and we return to an unsettlingly idyllic kingdom.

Whatever way you go with an idea like this, you would have a chance to forge a completely new story. Nothing in the world would be certain. Everything could change. And in a game so thoroughly rooted in decades worth of lore, a game where we so often retread the well-worn path of past mistakes, breaking every certainty in the game offers a freedom Warcraft hasn’t had in a long time. We could go into something wholly beyond our expectations. Something both familiar and different. Something new.

That’s particularly appealing now, because somehow even in the land of the dead we seem to be playing out a familiar pattern of story. We have the same heroes, the same villains, and even the same storylines, with Sylvanas playing the role of Garrosh 2.0, Anduin playing the role of Arthas 2.0, Bolvar playing the leadership role that Khadgar has recently been filling, and so on. Things change, sure, but also things stay the same. Ditching much of what we know by removing many major lore figures and heroes from Azeroth and advancing the clock could give us a brand new world to return to… for good or for ill.

However, after people started worrying about this, one of the devs reassured everyone that it wasn’t going to be like that. Which isn’t to say that such an idea is 100% off the table, but it does make it less likely. And I suspect everyone making WoW is pretty tied to the history and wouldn’t remake Azeroth to the extent that I’m imagining.

Ah well.

Someone will hate everything you love and someone else will love everything you hate. I, myself, am drawn to cute, silly things in the game because they are cute and silly in the midst of a game where we are constantly reminded that the game is called Warcraft, not Peacecraft, and locks us in a never-ending struggle between the factions. So it’s nice to have the occasional silly thing. And Pepe is made all the sillier because we can carry him around, dress him up, even collect achievements with him. There’s a lot of appeal to that. (Though I myself feel like it’s been overplayed at this point. Let’s have something new!)

But for those people who really want to keep the War in Warcraft, these silly moments might annoy. Their tone doesn’t suit the story at all, and they’re simply goofy things that distract from the story itself. (Or, like me, they think the Pepe hype has just been going on too long now.)

I can understand the dislike. But hey, let people like what they like.

Wyvern all the way.

I’m afraid not. I always thought the bosses in five seconds articles we did were really good, very helpful. But not many people read them, and there are already guides out there that tell you everything you need to know. There’s not much value we can add to what’s already available elsewhere, so we don’t expend a ton of effort on fight guides these days. Check out Wowhead’s guide, which is more thorough than anything we would have written.

It’s definitely annoying, but players have a long history of doing really dumb things because the story requires them to. And I think to an extent it has to. If no one made mistakes, if we always made the most intelligent choices, then the sigils would still be safe and the Jailer would still be trapped in the Maw. For him to succeed we have to fail, which means making stupid mistakes here and there.

I wish we made stupid mistakes a little less often, though.

This is normal; they always send these around about a day after they’re available. They do the same for new patches and expansions — they’ll email everyone either late in the day or the next day to remind us of exciting new content to play, even if we’ve been logged on and playing all day. Just a little time delay; nothing significant.

And that’s all for now, friends. For everyone having fun in patch 9.1, I hope you get the chance to play some more this weekend. And for everyone who hasn’t been having fun, I hope you have something good lined up to occupy your time. It’s the weekend, so break out your sunglasses (even if you’re staying inside), put on your finest transmog (or at least your most comfortable transmog), pet your dogs (or someone else’s), and have a good time (or at least do your best).